FFI::Platypus::Lang::Zig

Documentation and tools for using Platypus with the Zig programming language

SYNOPSIS

Zig:

export fn add(a: i32, b: i32) callconv(.C) i32 {
    return a + b;
}

Perl:

use FFI::Platypus 2.00;
use FFI::CheckLib qw( find_lib_or_die );
use File::Basename qw( dirname );

my $ffi = FFI::Platypus->new( api => 2, lang => 'Zig' );
$ffi->lib(
  find_lib_or_die(
    lib        => 'add',
    libpath    => [dirname __FILE__],
    systempath => [],
  )
);

$ffi->attach( add => ['i32','i32'] => 'i32' );

print add(1,2), "\n";  # prints 3

DESCRIPTION

This module provides native Zig types for FFI::Platypus in order to reduce cognitive load and concentrate on Zig and forget about C types. This document also covers using Platypus with Zig, and includes a number of examples.

Note that in addition to using pre-compiled Zig libraries, you can bundle Zig code with your Perl distribution using FFI::Build and FFI::Build::File::Zig.

EXAMPLES

The examples in this discussion are bundled with this distribution and can be found in the examples directory.

Passing and Returning Integers

Zig Source

export fn add(a: i32, b: i32) callconv(.C) i32 {
    return a + b;
}

Perl Source

use FFI::Platypus 2.00;
use FFI::CheckLib qw( find_lib_or_die );
use File::Basename qw( dirname );

my $ffi = FFI::Platypus->new( api => 2, lang => 'Zig' );
$ffi->lib(
  find_lib_or_die(
    lib        => 'add',
    libpath    => [dirname __FILE__],
    systempath => [],
  )
);

$ffi->attach( add => ['i32','i32'] => 'i32' );

print add(1,2), "\n";  # prints 3

Execute

$ zig build-lib -dynamic add.zig
$ perl add.pl
3

Notes

Basic types like integers and floating points are the easiest to pass across the FFI boundary. The Platypus Zig language plugin (this module) provides the basic types used by Zig (for example: bool, i32, u64, f64, isize and others) will all work as a Zig programmer would expect. This is nice because you don't have to think about what the equivalent types would be in C when you are writing your Perl extension in Zig.

Zig functions do not use the same ABI as C by default, so if you want to be able to call Zig functions from Perl they need to be declared with the C calling convention callconv(.C) as in this example.

METHODS

Generally you will not use this class directly, instead interacting with the FFI::Platypus instance. However, the public methods used by Platypus are documented here.

native_type_map

my $hashref = FFI::Platypus::Lang::Zig->native_type_map;

This returns a hash reference containing the native aliases for the Zig programming languages. That is the keys are native Zig types and the values are libffi native types.

CAVEATS

Only one example so far! Hopefully more to come soon.

SEE ALSO

• FFI::Platypus

  The Core Platypus documentation

• Zig Language Reference

AUTHOR

Graham Ollis [email protected]

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2022 by Graham Ollis.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.